I am a Senior Lecturer in the department of Linguistics and English Language, School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. I received my PhD from the University of Tromsø, following a specialist degree at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Moscow State University. Previously I was Lecturer in Language and Linguistics at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. I came to Edinburgh in 2013 as Lecturer in Theoretical Phonology.
I am a phonologist whose primary areas of interest concern the nature of phonological features and the division of labour in phonological theory. Recently I have also been working on the interaction between segmental and suprasegmental phonology, particularly on the proper analysis of so-called ‘pitch accent’ systems. My other interests are morphology-phonology interaction (in particular stratal/cyclic models), historical phonology, and historical language contact. In particular, I am interested in the interesting phonological commonalities among the languages of north-western Europe, such as preaspiration, ‘pitch accent’ systems, sonorant pre-occlusion etc. Read more about this project here; a monograph on the subject is currently under contract to Cambridge University Press.
At Edinburgh, I am affiliated to the Phonetics and Phonology, Language Variation and Change, and English Language research groups. I am also an affiliate of the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics.
Most of my work is on Celtic languages — particularly Welsh and Irish, and more recently also Scottish Gaelic (chan eil ach beagan Gàidhlig agam an-dràsta). My PhD thesis provides a comparison of selected aspects of the phonology of two Brythonic Celtic varieties, and a book based on parts of it was published with Edinburgh University Press (read more here). My other particular interest is in Germanic — particularly North Germanic — languages. I have also worked on Slavic and Romance varieties.
In Semester 2 of 2020⁄2021, I am course organizer for the pre-Honours course LEL2D: Cross-Linguistic Variation: Limits and Theories, where I also teach the universals of variation and phonology blocks. I also teach in pre-Honours on Linguistics and the Gaelic Language, and at Honours/MSc level on Historical Linguistics and Guided Research in Linguistics and English Language.
My paper with Will Lamb entitled Dialect variation in Scottish Gaelic nominal morphology: A quantitative study has appeared in Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics.
My paper The life cycle of preaspiration in the Gaelic languages has appeared in the Proceedings of the 2018 Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster.
I gave talk on my ongoing project on northern European areal phonology at the 2020 Zvegintsev Conference to celebrate 60 years of my alma mater, OTiPL.
I gave a talk with an overview of some of my recent work on Russian phonology for the Abralin ao Vivo series of online talks.
I have contributed a brief paper on Russian yer vowels to a Festschrift for my undergraduate supervisor, Vladimir Plungian.
Before you ask, anghyflawn is Welsh for ‘incomplete’. I also get asked about my name a lot, so here is a brief explanation.
This website was created with Hugo, on the basis of the great design by Greg Restall.
I’m Pavel Iosad, and I’m a Senior Lecturer in the department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. ¶ You can always go to the start page to learn more.